It’s no longer new news that Rosemount Estate has found a soulmate in Robert Mondavi Wines, the publicly listed Napa Valley-based US wine producer which was founded by and is still controlled by the Mondavi family. The two companies have formed a 50/50 joint venture to produce and market worldwide two new wine lines, one of which will be produced in Australia, the other in California. Each of the wines will be made under the joint direction of chief winemakers Tim Mondavi of Robert Mondavi and Philip Shaw of Rosemount. Robert Mondavi will sell the Australian wines worldwide, while Rosemount will handle the Californian wines. The first Californian wines are from the excellent 2000 vintage and is already in the cellars, while the first Australian wines will be made in 2001. There’s a natural synergy between the two companies, since Rosemount Estate stakes a strong claim to be Australia’s largest family-owned wine business, ahead of other family owned enterprises like McWilliam’s Wines, Brown Brothers and De Bortoli. The Robert Mondavi company operates a number of successful joint ventures within and outside the US, including Opus One, the Napa Valley-based red wine operation shared with the Baroness Philippine de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton Rothschild. Other partners are the Marchesi de’Frescobaldi of Tuscany, with whom Mondavia makes the labels of Luce, Lucente and Danzante, plus the Eduardo Chadwick family of Via Errazuriz in Chile, with whom they are jointly responsible for the Sena and Caliterra brands. Robert Mondavi also has a minority interest in Tenuta dell’Ornellaia in the Bolgheri appellation of Tuscany, which produces Ornellaia and Masseto. Rosemount Estate’s chief executive officer and deputy chairman is Keith Lambert, a thoroughly energetic American with an appetite for living life and doing business in Australia. This new venture gives him a new opportunity to do business again in the US. ‘This concept isn’t about conquering California’, he says. ‘It’s about simply taking a range of wines branded with Rosemount Estate and Robert Mondavi and selling them through our global distribution system worldwide. It’s about taking Australian wine to the world market and capitalising on its growth around the world. In most overseas markets except Germany, it’s growing faster than US wine.” Rosemount’s founder Bob Oatley says that the venture offers the possibilities of export expansion while still retaining the company’s autonomy. How big might it become? ‘I’m not sure, but just hope we offer something new to the consumer that might have been missed in all this merger mania’, says Keith Lambert. Michael Mondavi, president and chief executive officer of Robert Mondavi, cuts straight to the chase when he says that one of the major attractions of the venture will be the addition of a ‘world class’ shiraz to our luxury wine portfolio while also opening the door into the growth of the Australian superpremium wine segment. Given that both sides of the venture anticipate no small degree of technical and cultural exchange, the Americans also stand to benefit from Rosemount’s experience with shiraz. Lambert correctly reminds me that Rosemount sells eight shirazes at different price points in the US and expects Philip Shaw to pass on a ‘fair bit of knowledge’. Much-needed knowledge, in my experience of US shiraz. ‘In return we will get a lot out of it too, in terms of purchasing synergies, sharing R&D, winemaking and viticultural practices’, says Lambert. ‘Some were concerned initially that the technical exchange might be more of a one-way street, but that would only happen if we let it and I can’t believe anyway that would be the case.’ The real challenge facing the joint venture will be to create the luxury red wines at the US$100 price point, but Lambert says Philip Shaw is confident he can do something special, ‘better than Mountain Blue and Balmoral’. Obviously the initial wine will come from the existing resources that contribute to these wines, but Lambert doesn’t want to put a hole in his company’s existing premium wine programme. ‘What the wines will ultimately be sourced from is open for debate, but the two companies are in agreement that nobody needs another Napa Valley cabernet or another Coonawarra cabernet. Let’s put these family wine companies shoulder to the wheel and get them to start pioneering. In our case the wine might even end up from Orange or Mudgee. We don’t want to take from Mondavi’s existing premium vineyards – they have that area covered – and they’ve agreed to try something new and exciting.’ Next cab off the ranks will be the so-called super-premium range which sell for around US$12-15. Each company expects to produce two red wines and a white at this price point before Lambert expects them to fill the pricing gap with a third tier, an ‘ultra-premium’ range. Having come so far, Keith Lambert is still scratching his head for a proprietary name for the joint venture’s wines. The working names, he says, are Nokia and Ericsson, after each company’s chosen brand of mobile phone. ‘I hope we can do better’, he admits. It’s likely that the Californian and Australian wines will have different names, although the crest of each company will appear on each label, so if you have any bright ideas, send them to Rosemount’s head office at Artarmon. The company’s chief executive officer and deputy chairman is offering a ‘pretty good quantity’ of the first releases for anyone who nails it.
